Broadcasting

Introduction

Masonite understands the developer need for building modern web applications so Masonite 1.4+ ships with WebSocket support. With a new Service Provider, configuration file and support for the pusher, ably and pubnub drivers out of the box, we can now have full web socket support quickly and easily.

Configuration

All broadcasting configuration is located in the config/broadcast.py file. There are only two options: DRIVER and DRIVERS. The DRIVER should hold the value of the driver you want to use such as pusher:

DRIVER = 'pusher'

and DRIVERS should hold the configuration data:

DRIVERS = {
    'pusher': {
        'app_id': os.getenv('PUSHER_APP_ID', '29382xx..'),
        'client': os.getenv('PUSHER_CLIENT', 'shS8dxx..'),
        'secret': os.getenv('PUSHER_SECRET', 'HDGdjss..'),
    },
    'ably': {
        'secret': os.getenv('ABLY_SECRET', 'api:key')
    },
    'pubnub': {
        'secret': env('PUBNUB_SECRET', ''),
        'publish_key': env('PUBNUB_PUBLISH_KEY', ''),
        'subscribe_key': env('PUBNUB_SUBSCRIBE_KEY', '')
    }
}

Each driver may require it's own individual setting values so be sure to check the documentation for the driver you are using. For the ably, pusher and pubnub drivers, these are the only values you will need.

Make sure that the key in the DRIVER setting has a corresponding key in the DRIVERS setting.

Pusher

If you are using Pusher you will need the Pusher library:

terminal

$ pip install pusher

Ably

If you are using Ably you will need the ably driver:

terminal

$ pip install ably

PubNub

If you are using PubNub you will need the PubNub library:

terminal

$ pip install pubnub

Usage

Since we have a ServiceProvider Service Provider which takes care of the container bindings for us, we can now it simply by passing Broadcast into our parameter list in our controller methods like so:

from masonite import Broadcast

def show(self, broadcast: Broadcast):
    print(broadcast) # prints the driver class

We can change the driver on the fly as well:

from masonite import Broadcast

def show(self, broadcast: Broadcast):
    print(broadcast.driver('ably')) # prints the ably driver class

All drivers have the same methods so don't worry about different drivers having different methods.

Channels

We can send data through our WebSocket by running:

from masonite import Broadcast

def show(self, broadcast: Broadcast):
    broadcast.channel('channel_name', 'message')

That's it! we have just sent a message to anyone subscribed to the channel_name channel.

We can also send a dictionary:

from masonite import Broadcast

def show(self, broadcast: Broadcast):
    broadcast.channel('channel_name', {'message': 'hello world'})

We can also send a message to multiple channels by passing a list:

from masonite import Broadcast

def show(self, broadcast: Broadcast):
    broadcast.channel(['channel1', 'channel2'], {'message': 'hello world'})

This will broadcast the message out to both channels. We can pass as many channels into the list as we like.

Masonite also has an optional third parameter which is the event name:

from masonite import Broadcast

def show(self, broadcast: Broadcast):
    broadcast.channel('channel_name', 'message', 'subscribed')

Which will pass the event on to whoever is receiving the WebSocket.

Changing Drivers

You can also swap drivers on the fly:

from masonite import Broadcast

def show(self, broadcast: Broadcast):
    broadcast.driver('ably').channel('channel_name', 'message', 'subscribed')

or you can explicitly specify the class:

from masonite.drivers import BroadcastAblyDriver

from masonite import Broadcast

def show(self, broadcast: Broadcast):
    broadcast.driver(BroadcastAblyDriver).channel('channel_name', 'message', 'subscribed')